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Photo of the Month |
Edward Quintard, M.D., son-in-law of William B. and Matilda (Langdon) Hayden of Columbus, OH and New York City, was an outstanding medical practitioner and educator, and among the few of our cousins to be named in the New York Social Register. Edward also served as the personal physician to many celebrities in and around New York City in the early 1900s. Perhaps the best known patient was Samuel Langhorne Clemens -- better known as the best-selling author "Mark Twain" and creator of such American classics as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The great friends stand together here in an image that Clemens later autographed.
Edward was at Clemens' deathbed at the end and played such a role in the author's life that he has been portrayed twice by actors in films about Clemens. When the writer's health began to fail in 1908, he summoned Edward from New York to make an in-person examination at his home in Hartford, CT. Writes biographer Albert Bigelow Paine in Mark Twain: A Biography, Edward "did not hesitate to say that the trouble proceeded chiefly from the heart, and counseled diminished smoking, with less active exercise, advising particularly against Clemens's lifetime habit of lightly skipping up and down stairs."
Edward was a published poet in his own right and penned "Sonnets;" "Sea Babies and Other Babies;" "Battle Hymn and Litany;" "Extra Muros and Other Essays;" "From a Window;" and "Vernal Tides and A La St. Terre;" among other works. He also authored numerous technical medical papers.
This image is provided courtesy of the University of Virginia Library.
Copyright © 2009 Mark A. Miner